Recipe 24: Chocolate pavlova with raspberries

As committed readers of this blog will have already worked out – I generally think that pudding should be the highlight of a meal – and on this occasion, pudding did not disappoint! I made Nigella’s chocolate pavlova. I’m slightly nervous of meringue and pavlova is intimidating, mainly because my mother-in-law makes the best pavlova ever! But I hoped that it being chocolate-y would make it different and possibly easier to forgive if it didn’t come out ok. My fallback would have been to serve the raspberries with some shortbread and cream, if it had all gone wrong!

Making it: as the owner of a wonderful Kenwood mixer – making meringue is simple once all the eggs have been separated – the machine is turned on and 5 minutes later there are stiff egg-whites! Once that is done, I added chopped chocolate and cocoa powder to make it chocolate-y (as previously mentioned the easiest way to chop chocolate is to use my mezzaluna and curved chopping board). Then the meringue was artfully dumped onto a baking tray and carefully slotted in the oven for a slow gentle cook. As it cooked, it obviously rose and spread, so even my biggest baking tray wasn’t quite wide enough for it – so it had a straight edge along one side when it came out!

When I ready to serve it – the pavlova was topped with whipped cream and raspberries – as raspberries and chocolate is the best combination!

Eating it: WOW… this is one amazing pudding! Silence descended while people ate – always a good sign. The addition of chocolate to the meringue made it really soft yet dense. The chocolate-raspberry combo was fantastic. It managed to be something that was both rich and light… dangerously delicious. Mum suggested that this should become my party-piece dessert!

Next time: It was HUGE… probably could make a smaller meringue – perhaps 4 eggs instead of 6 and still serve 8 people happily.

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[…] and easier to produce – and that can only be a good thing if it means that I can make the chocolate pavlova more often! The potential downside is that 15 eggs whites is a huge quantity – so I have lots […]